


Semicolon

by burymeinziam



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-01
Updated: 2013-03-01
Packaged: 2017-12-03 23:50:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/704057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burymeinziam/pseuds/burymeinziam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A semicolon is used when a sentence could have been ended, but it didn’t; it kept going…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Semicolon

“I want a love that kisses similes so deeply they make metaphors green with envy.”

Liam laughs, turning his head slightly so he’s focused on Zayn’s face. “What the hell does that even mean?”

When Zayn looks into Liam’s eyes he doesn’t say anything, his lips pursed as if he wants to speak but the words are too far out of reach. They sit in silence on a bench outside of the rusty cobble brown complex Zayn rents out listening to the varying noises of the night. Zayn gazes out ahead of him, his expression thoughtful, and Liam feels silly for even bothering with such a silly question. Thinking before he spoke wasn’t something Liam was great at doing and, even though he never said anything, Zayn knew. Whenever Zayn would become serious or lost in his words Liam would crumble away from them or say something stupid and young.

Zayn was wise beyond his years and Liam, well, Liam wasn’t.

“I didn’t – I didn’t mean…”

“No,” Zayn says, shaking his head as he turns to Liam with a smile. “It’s alright; I promise.”

Liam nods wishing things came as easily to him as they did to Zayn. Even when trying to apologize, Liam can never find the right words for the moment; moments where he needs something that sounds mature and definite and sure. Sometimes Zayn will glare at him as though Liam were undefined words on a page, the kind that children would skip over and ignore if they couldn’t pronounce them correctly. He’ll look at Liam as if he wants to look him up and pin him as a noun or a verb or something pretty like an adjective.

“It smells like rain,” Zayn says softly, interrupting Liam’s thoughts.

Liam tilts his head back and inhales a large breath of air. The clouds are shifting in directions that tell stories of shapes and images that are completely unique to anyone who cares to read them and Liam wonders what Zayn sees when he looks at them. He wonders if Zayn sees something as wonderful as they things he pens to paper.

“Just a little,” Liam answers as Zayn leans forward to tie his shoelace. Zayn stops, his eyes big and bright as he looks up toward Liam. With the way Zayn is looking at him, Liam can feel his face growing hot and the response makes him feel so much less mature than he really is and all of the sudden he’s that naïve seventeen-year-old boy who stumbled into a small poetry reading, all lost and misguided with no clear path in life. And Zayn, even though he’s only two years older than Liam, seems to know so much more. He’s so sure of himself. He knows who he is and Liam is still trying to figure it out.

“I want to love you in ways words cannot describe; ways in which only bedroom walls can speak of.”

Zayn leans in closer, his breath crowding Liam’s personal space forcing him to breathe in all of Zayn’s secrets and innermost desires. Even without the touch of lips the moment feels so completely intimate causing chills to shoot up Liam’s spine. Zayn’s eyes are just shy of being closed when a smile tugs at the corners of his lips and he’s taking Liam’s hand and leading him up the cobblestone steps and into his apartment.

Liam can feel the first raindrop land with a soft splash against his forehead before millions follow suit just as he and Zayn make it inside of the apartment. They stumble into the bedroom, Zayn’s smile big and warm and a little younger than usual as he pulls Liam down onto the bed with him. Liam smiles back, running his fingers through thick black hair as he kisses the lips that have told him dozens upon dozens of poems of lust and love and worry; joy and anger and sorrow.

Zayn has undressed Liam many times before with his eyes and with his words. He has this way of making everything beautiful even when it isn't supposed to be, or when Liam feels doing so would be impossible. Zayn just has this way about him that makes him seem so much older than he really is which is one of the things Liam loves most about him. With Zayn’s fingers tracing patterns and etching nouns and adjectives into his skin, Liam feels whole and grown. He no longer feels like that inexperienced seventeen-year-old boy who’d gotten lost at a poetry reading three years ago. Liam doesn’t feel the need to apologize for all of the things that make him and Zayn so different; things like not knowing how to be kind all of the time, or not knowing how to love correctly or the correct usage of a semicolon.

When Zayn kisses him it’s like he’s speaking in tongues, working his way into Liam’s soul with pretty words and phrases that make his insides swell and burst. He sighs into Liam’s mouth, rolling him onto his back as Liam combs his fingers through messy black hair that probably hasn’t been brushed in days. Zayn’s lips trail down Liam’s jaw before latching onto his neck and reciting hushed words with meanings only Zayn is really able to understand. Liam feels as though he can’t breathe when he looks down and his own eyes are met with ones creating cursive poetry all over his curves as they make love in vowels and heavy consonants. He’s gripping the sheets at his sides with each push and pull of Zayn’s body against his own. They fuck until they bleed ink, until all Liam can see is stars and shapes and letters; things he doesn’t understand, but also doesn’t feel the need to.

The bed is a mess when it’s over, but that’s the beauty in capturing the right kind of words for a great poem. It’s in the way the sheets are sagging onto the floor and the window is left open so the wind is greeting their faces and kissing their cheeks. It’s in the unspoken sentences forming between Zayn and Liam that they both recognize as being there but don’t need to say aloud.

“Are you seriously writing right now?” Liam asks, but his tone is light and playful because it’s rare that he doesn’t see Zayn without a pen between his lips and a cigarette squeezed tight between his fingers.

“Yeah,” Zayn says turning to Liam with a warm smile before returning his attention to the page in front of him. “It comforts me.”

“I thought I did that,” Liam replies quietly, leaning in toward Zayn to get a better look at what he had written down.

Zayn nods. “You do,” he answers. “Every second of every minute of every day for the past three years; that’s why it’s about you.”

Liam hums. “What’s it’s called?”

Zayn puts his cigarette out in the ashtray on the nightstand before twirling the pen between his fingers and jotting a few notes down at the top corner of the page. “Semicolon.”

“I don’t get it,” Liam says furrowing his brow due to his inability to wrap his head around the title. He’d never been good with words or grammar; not like Zayn. Liam just can't seem to wrap his tongue around idioms and metaphors or commas and hyphens and semicolons.

Zayn doesn’t say anything more though, something he’s good at. He just sets the notepad aside and settles into the bed, pulling Liam down with him, and kissing him slow and soft and sweet and expecting him to know why

“Goodnight.”

It isn’t until the early hours of the morning when Zayn is still fast asleep and dreaming in figures of speech and fancy marks of punctuation that Liam begins to realize why he’s Zayn’s semicolon in life. It starts with all the arguments, displaced feelings they find themselves in. It’s in Zayn’s unwavering –and sometimes selfish – dedication to his work and Liam’s desire – and sometimes incapability – to understand. It’s in the prose and the poetry; the sentiments and the love.

A semicolon is used when a sentence could have been ended, but it didn’t; it kept going…


End file.
